though this man still held by certain outward liens to the
slimy side of humanity, he belonged also and positively to the sphere
where force is intelligent. In spite of the many veils which enveloped
his soul, there were certain ineffable symptoms of this fact which were
visible to pure spirits, to the eyes of the child whose innocence has
known no breath of evil passions, to the eyes of the old man who has
lived to regain his purity.

These signs revealed a Cain for whom there was still hope,--one who
seemed as though he were seeking absolution from the ends of the
earth. Minna suspected the galley-slave of glory in the man; Seraphita
recognized him. Both admired and both pitied him. Whence came their
prescience? Nothing could be more simple nor yet more extraordinary.
As soon as we seek to penetrate the secrets of Nature, where nothing
is secret, and where it is only necessary to have the eyes to see, we
perceive that the simple produces the marvellous.

"Seraphitus," said Minna one evening a few days after Wilfrid's arrival
in Jarvis, "you read the soul of this stranger while I have only vague
impressions of it. He chills me or else he excites me; but you seem to
know the cause of this cold and of this heat; tell me what it means, for
you know all about him."

"Yes, I have seen the causes," said Seraphitus, lowing his large
eyelids.

"By what power?" asked the curious Minna.

"I have the gift of Specialism," he answered. "Specialism is an inward
sight which can penetrate all things; you will only understand its full
meaning through a comparison. In the great cities of Europe where works
are produced by which the human Hand seeks to represent the effects of
the moral nature was well as those of the physical nature, there are
glorious men who express ideas in marble. The sculptor acts on the
stone; he fashions it; he puts a realm of ideas into it. There
are statues which the hand of man has endowed with the faculty of
representing the noble side of humanity, or the whole evil side; most
men see in such marbles a human figure and nothing more; a few other
men, a little higher in the scale of being, perceive a fraction of the
thoughts expressed in the statue; but the Initiates in the secrets of
art are of the same intellect as the sculptor; they see in his work
the whole universe of his thought. Such persons are in themselves the
principles of art; they bear within them a mirror which reflects nature
in her slight